In-Person in Largo, MD | Online Across DC, MD & VA
Financial Social Work/Financial Therapy
Your money story isn’t just numbers—it’s emotional.
Your relationship with money started long before you ever had a paycheck.
Financial therapy is for clients who:
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- Feel guilt, shame, or anxiety around spending, saving, or earning
- Struggle with overspending, underspending, or inconsistent money patterns
- Avoid looking at their finances—even if they “make good money”
- Grew up in families where money was a source of stress, silence, or control
- Have trouble setting financial boundaries with loved ones or partners
- Want to explore how money beliefs are impacting their relationships, self-worth, or goals
- Are ready to do more than “budget better”—they want to heal
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Financial Social Work is a therapeutic approach that helps you understand, heal, and rewrite your money story.
What Is Financial Social Work?
Financial Social Work—often called financial therapy—is a client-centered, evidence-informed approach that explores the emotional and relational aspects of money. It’s not about spreadsheets or judgment. It’s about uncovering the beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that shaped your relationship with money—and learning to respond to finances with clarity and self-trust.
Whether your challenges show up as shame, scarcity, avoidance, overspending, financial enmeshment, or toxic independence, this work helps you get beneath the surface and reclaim your power with money.
How My Approach Will Help You Get to Your Goals
I bring both clinical training and a trauma-informed lens to this work. Together, we’ll map your personal money history and uncover how it’s shaping your thoughts, emotions, and decisions around finances today. We’ll explore not just “what you do with money”—but why.
As a Financial Social Work–trained therapist, I use tools and frameworks to support emotional regulation, financial empowerment, and sustainable behavior change—whether that means setting financial boundaries, healing scarcity wounds, or expanding your capacity to receive.
What to Expect
Our work may include narrative exercises, money timelines, visualizations, or somatic grounding techniques. We’ll explore the emotional roots of your patterns, challenge internalized money messages, and co-create new scripts that align with your values and goals.
I also incorporate Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)—a research-supported tapping method—to help gently release nervous system activation tied to financial trauma, scarcity fears, or deep-seated money shame. This allows us to move past stuck emotional loops, so you can make empowered financial decisions from a place of calm, not survival mode.
You don’t need a certain income bracket to benefit from this work—just a willingness to get honest about what money has meant in your life, and what you want it to mean moving forward.
Financial Therapy can help you…
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- Understand where your money patterns come from—and how to change them
- Feel safe looking at your finances without spiraling into shame or shutdown
- Set and hold financial boundaries with partners, family, or clients
- Heal the emotional wounds tied to scarcity, guilt, or financial trauma
- Replace panic spending or avoidance with intentional, values-aligned choices
- Rebuild self-worth that isn’t tied to your bank balance or productivity
- Expand your capacity to receive, invest, and grow—without guilt
- Break generational money patterns without betraying your family or your values
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Together, we’ll unpack what money has meant—and redefine what it gets to mean moving forward.
FAQ's
Q: What’s the difference between financial therapy and working with a financial advisor?
A: Financial therapy focuses on the emotional and psychological side of your money story—not just the numbers. While a financial advisor might help you create a budget or investment plan, financial therapy helps you explore the beliefs, patterns, and trauma that impact how you relate to money in the first place. Both can be valuable, but they address different needs.
Q: Do I need to be “bad with money” to benefit from financial therapy?
A: Not at all. Many of my clients are financially stable or even high earners—but still feel anxious, avoidant, guilty, or overwhelmed when it comes to money. Financial therapy isn’t about how much money you have. It’s about how safe, empowered, and aligned you feel with the way you use it.
Q: Can financial therapy help with issues around money in my relationship?
A: Yes. Financial therapy is incredibly helpful for understanding and navigating the role money plays in relationships—whether that’s romantic partnerships, family dynamics, or business collaborations. We can explore communication patterns, financial boundaries, shared money goals, and more.
Q: What if I have past trauma related to money or financial control?
A: That’s exactly where financial therapy can help. We’ll approach these experiences gently and safely, often using tools like Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) to release nervous system activation and shift long-held beliefs. Healing is possible—and you don’t have to do it alone.
Here to help you with:
Toxic Money Patterns
Financial Anxiety
First Generation Wealth Stress
Overspending or Compulsive Shopping
Scarcity Mindset
Entrepreneurial Money Blocks
Financial Codependency
Inconsistent Income Patterns
Avoidance of Financial Planning
Money Trauma
You deserve to feel safe, seen, and supported in your financial healing.
Whether you’re breaking generational money patterns, navigating a financial identity crisis, or just tired of pretending money doesn’t stress you out—it’s okay to ask for support. This isn’t just about your bank account.
It’s about your peace.